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From Welt Online:
Research and advisory firm Gartner Inc. positioned Dell in the "Leaders Quadrant” of its Magic Quadrant for Midrange Enterprise Disk Arrays, 20081 report, Dell announced today.
Do you think that Dell is a leader? We'd like to hear your thoughts.
Cisco, as announced in this WSJ article, that they will be releasing several new tools and products with the aim to help business users collaborate more effectively. The company has predicted that this market is worth $34 billion, and as such with this announcement, hopes to reel in a chunk of it. The start of their entry into this market space began with their acquisition of WebEx, and along with the new releases and updates to existing products, Cisco will be facing existing industry heavyweights including Microsoft and Google. Regarding this entry into a new market, the WSJ article reports:
“The offerings include Cisco WebEx Connect, an online service designed to integrate tools such as instant messaging and Web conferencing with conventional business software and newer Internet applications such as blogs and wikis, which are collaborative Web sites.”
The latest post on ComputerWeekly.com makes the case that effective collaboration could have saved us from the mess that banking systems are at now. Financial institutions make an effort to analyze risk, and so why not use collaborative technology to aid in this process.
Integration of collaborative portals would given the right people access to the right knowledge, thus improving decision making within all parts of the enterprise. Ian White mentions that people should not ask when and what collaborative technology should be used for, but how can the features of the applications be used to improve the organization.
Amid breaking news on Google Chrome, as we discussed here, you may have missed that the undoubtedly innovative company also launched Google Video for business. This new application allows businesses to have a YouTube like app, exclusively for their use with additional capabilities to limit access. As this article summarizes:
“Google Video for businesses is a new enterprise application that enables messaging and collaboration among employees who require more discretion in sharing video content. Google Video for businesses leverages the cloud computing infrastructure Google employs for YouTube, one of the company's core Web services.”
Also as Matthew Glotzbach, product management director for Google Enterprise, stated:
"Think of it as private-label YouTube for your domain, with security in place so you can control who has access to what video"
With the tremendous influx in messaging, and video as well as file sharing, this new app from Google will help enterprises to feel more secure while still participating in this trend. What are your thoughts on this new application? Are there benefits to be found in this for your organization?
William Buist, president of BlackStar life community for Ecademy, made this important point as mentioned by this article from WhatPC.
“With the current economic climate, cost will return to the corporate equation. Therefore, finding the right partner at the right cost makes collaboration even more important,” he says. “Big businesses need to understand exactly how to collaborate effectively, both internally and externally.”
Communication is a key ingredient when it comes to collaboration, and as noted by many experts, enterprise networking sites are starting to change the dynamic of the traditional business communication style. As researchers at Forrester Research have already noted, blogs, wikis, rss, and other web 2.0 tools, have become the biggest buzz words in business and it doesn’t look to be just a current craze that will soon die out. Instead it looks to be what will be considered the norm of tomorrow. Oliver Young, analyst for Forrester, made this interesting statement, however, that
“Until now, IT Departments have resisted Web 2.0 tools, often viewing them as consumer grade”
This soon may no longer be an option since as mentioned above, with the current stated of the economy, companies simply may not be able to afford this type of thinking.
Peter Burris, a principle analyst for Forrester research reveals some useful tips in this article regarding Web 2.0 technologies in the workplace to foster collaboration. As he points out many businesses understand the need for these technologies in the new enterprise 2.0 workplace, but sill have little understanding of how to execute. Below are five tips that he recommends:
Do you have any tips that could be added to this list?
